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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

Some­thing less stress­ful at work

A Japan­ese study titled ​“Read­ing on a smart­phone affects sigh gen­er­a­tion, brain activ­i­ty, and com­pre­hen­sion” shows that read­ing com­pre­hen­sion is bet­ter on paper than read­ing on a screen. This is also sup­port­ed by a meta-analy­sis titled ​“Com­par­i­son of read­ing per­for­mance on screen and on paper”, which includes 17 stud­ies on the top­ic. The Japan­ese researchers sug­gest this is like­ly because read­ing on a screen is cog­ni­tive­ly more chal­leng­ing than on paper. Addi­tion­al­ly, a screen can offer many more dis­trac­tions from read­ing com­pared to paper.

Do this

If you have to read some­thing impor­tant and it’s cru­cial that you ful­ly under­stand it, don’t hes­i­tate to print it out. Of course, let’s try to reduce paper con­sump­tion in gen­er­al, but it’s not a big deal if you print some­thing impor­tant now and then. You prob­a­bly read most things on a screen anyway.

If a col­league thinks you’re doing some­thing wrong and are too old-fash­ioned, refer to the two stud­ies I men­tioned here. There are also more stud­ies out there, but I found these two quickly.

Few­er mistakes!

Accord­ing to the stud­ies I men­tioned, print­ing some­thing dig­i­tal increas­es your read­ing com­pre­hen­sion. This reduces the risk of mak­ing mis­takes that you will then have to spend time cor­rect­ing. Instead, you will do things right from the begin­ning and save time, an invalu­able resource.

What do you do?

What texts do you pre­fer to read on paper? Let me know!

(You may not always have a print­er avail­able. Here is how to remem­ber to print when you have the chance!)